I love my wife. Utterly and endlessly. It’s a sickness, yeah I know. As a married man I’m supposed to do nothing but complain about her, but that just doesn’t happen. I love her even though we don’t see eye to eye on the whole gun thing.
My wife was solidly in the neutral camp when I started getting all gun-nutty. When she met me, I had a rifle and a pistol and that was it, and that didn’t bother her at all. She wasn’t anti, but she surely wasn’t “pro”. She went with me a few times to the range, even when I had to borrow someone else’s 9mm so she’d have something to shoot.
Fast forward a few years. I told her I was planning on getting my CCW and she wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea, but she didn’t complain. I found out later that me carrying a firearm everywhere made her a bit uncomfortable as did my ever increasing arsenal. But, she knew I was keeping her and the girls safe and even got used to hugging me and feeling the lump of the Glock on my hip.
Now, time for me to admit something I’m fully ashamed of. I eventually had the discussion with her that she should start considering carrying a pistol for protection. Let’s just say that argument went really, really bad. Someone, and I won’t mention my own name, lost his cool in the whole affair. I can hold my calm when dealing with the most ardent anti-gunner. I can remain cool and rational during even a heated debate about guns with someone I barely know. Make that other person the love of my life and all that control went right out the window, effectively putting her off the whole CCW thing for life.
Or so I thought.
Several times, my wife has been talking with her friends and the topics of guns has come up. Her friends would say something disparaging about guns or gun owners and my wife, bless her, put on a suit of armor, hopped on her white horse, and rode to my defense. As she is forced to listen to me talk about guns day in and day out, she is well versed in many of the statistics that put to rest the lies that people hear on TV or see in the movies. Defending her man, she wouldn’t let her friends go on believing the lies in their heads.
It’s like that saying with guns & gays. Once you have some in your house, you can get downright defensive about them. I’ll take your word on the gay thing.
Fast forward a bit more to a few weeks ago, my wife went up to Jacksonville to visit her college roommate / bridesmaid. Her friend is definitely a crunchy granola, left leaning sort, but was telling Kari that she was planning on getting her CCW. This, of course, gave Kari a lot to talk about and, it turns out, something to think about.
Rewind to the day before yesterday, she was over at a friend’s house. Her friend had recently discovered that her husband had bought a handgun and said friend was mortified. Three guesses who sold him the gun, and the first two don’t count ;) Anyway, her friend was talking about how she needs to learn how to get over her fear and at least learn to use the gun (and shotgun) in case of a break in or whatever.
Which prompted my wife to say that she really needs to hit the range some more so that she’s comfortable with the guns. After finding out her friend was going to get her CCW, I saw the spark in her eyes but I didn’t push it (after recalling the disastrous, previous attempt). And out of the blue she asked me to take her to the range as well as said that for my birthday, she’d take me to the range as well (which is better than any trinket she could buy me).
I’m going to let her go at her own pace, but from her willingness to defend me and by proxy, gun rights in general, there’s a lot of hope here.
With my luck, she’ll start USPSA and kick my ass.
When we married, my wife was an anti-